Why Did We Buy What Victoria’s Secret Was Selling?
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The last ever Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show took place in 2018, before allegations of institutional misogyny surfaced at the underwear chain, but after many of us realized that it was peddling something more insidious than $40 teal lace push-up bras with rhinestone details. The model who opened the event was Taylor Hill, a then-22-year-old from Colorado with the guileless beauty and long limbs of a baby farm animal. “We should go forward; we should push the boundary,” Hill said in footage that was projected backstage before she made her entrance, dressed in a tiny plaid kilt, thigh-high stiletto boots, and a fuchsia brassiere with feathered fuchsia wings. The imperative, she added, was to “be sexy for ourselves, and for who we want to be, not because a man says you have to be. It was never about that in the first place.”
Except, with apologies to Hill, it kind of was. Victoria’s Secret was founded in 1977 by Roy Raymond, a former marketer for the cold-remedy company Vicks, who purportedly felt uncomfortable buying lingerie for his wife in existing stores and. It was important for the consumer to think that she was buying “this very romantic and sexy lingerie to feel good about herself, and the effect it had on a man was secondary,” Raymond tells Faludi. “It allowed us to sell these garments without seeming sexist.” He shrugs when she asks him if it was actually true. “It was just the philosophy we used. The media picked it up and called it a ‘trend,’ but I don’t know. I’ve never seen any statistics.”
